Author of "Tasty: The Art and Science of What We Eat," on the science of taste, culinary history, and the future of food. My work has appeared in Smithsonian magazine, Wired, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, the Guardian and the Huffington Post. In a previous life I was a reporter for The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, where I contributed to several Pulitzer Prize-winning efforts. I am the co-author of "Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms."

Climate change is “an absolute travesty of scientific research that was motivated by those who, in my opinion, saw this as an opportunity to create a panic and a crisis for government to be able to step in and even more greatly control your life.”

Now it appears that combating this kind of conspiracy-mongering drove Gleick not just to distraction, but clear round the bend.

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The entire AGW world is filled with Peter Gleicks. Look at the Climate Gate emails. Look at the failed predictions and pronouncements of the IPCC. Look at Mann’s big hockey stick lie. Look at the main source of the funds for this AGW science: big government.

The whole AGW enterprise is coming apart, and thank God for that. Its just incredible how susceptible our politicians are to this garbage. Better to have oil coming from the far away middle east than to have it come from a neighbor. None of them have any principles, just like their eco-brethren: the Goracles.

The science of AGW is a fantasy. If it weren’t, all any person would have to do is sprinkle some CO2 around any furnace to create limitless energy. But no one has because its a fraud, which has cost the taxpayers of this country hundreds of $billions in wasted expenditures as well as the taxpayers of many other countries .

Peter Gleick is representative of all that lies behind the science of AGW.

As anyone can go check out on Wikipedia, multiple studies all show 98% of climate scientists believe man made global warming is occurring yet the majority of Republicans do not believe global warming is occurring. What could explain this?

Theory 1: There is a world-wide conspiracy of climate scientists involving literally thousands of scientists from dozens of countries. This has been going on for decades. Tenured scientists with complete job security at places like MIT and Stanford have been blatantly lying due to their thirst for secretly controlled research dollars, disregarding their lifelong interest in science. NASA has been faking all its satellite temperature readings. Hundreds of studies on tree ring data, ice core samples, ocean temperature data, also faked. Glacier National Park really hasn’t lost 80% of its glaciers in the last generation. The 30% increase in worldwide droughts over the last two decades is also a fabrication. The record increases in forest fires, hurricanes, floods and species extinctions – just a few more lies. Another strange thing: the millions spent by Exxon, the Koch brothers, Murdoch, Heartland Institute, etc. to promote skeptical research cannot sway these scientists from recanting these lies even though they clearly love only money and not science.

Theory 2: The Republican establishment, soaked to the gills in fossil fuel money, who vote to grant $41 billion in subsidies to fossil fuel companies each year (that’s 80 Solyndras per year FYI) and traditional opponents of all environmental legislation, may have a wee bit of bias against accepting climate science and the party base just follows suit.

Both theories are possible, but we shouldn’t bet the future of upcoming generations on theory 1 being correct.

The 98 percent figure comes from this study by the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciencies: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107 From the abstract: Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.

enonomart – You denier kids are just amazing. You’re telling people to “look at the Climategate emails” in the very same post in which you condemn Dr. Gleick for spoofing Heartland into sending him their documents. The CRU emails were stolen by hackers, carefully edited, and held until such time as they could be released in an effort to disrupt a climate conference. Stealing private communications and using them in a campaign of slander and distortion is okay with you. But tricking an organization into sending you documents, then sending the documents out to be published in full is not? You should change your handle from “economart” to “motal relativist.”

Have you read the questions? You might want to have a look at the answers given by one of your fellow columnists at Forbes, James Taylor, who also agreed with the answers (to the two(!) questions). See http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/09/08/global-warming-a-98-consensus-of-nothing/ .

“Q1. “When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?”

Regarding the first question, in the early 1800s the world was in the grips of the Little Ice Age, which brought about the planet’s coldest temperatures since the last ice age epoch ended roughly 10,000 years ago. The answer to Question 1 is not only “risen,” but more appropriately (and sarcastically) “Duh!” (And it’s a good thing the answer is “risen.” Only the most zealous and delusional of global warming activists would argue the Little Ice Age brought about beneficial climate conditions.)

Regarding the second question, is human activity a significant contributing factor? Notice how the question did not say “sole factor,” “majority factor,” or even “primary contributing factor.” Rather, the term is merely “significant contributing factor.” More precisely, if human activity is not a “significant” contributing factor then it must be an “insignificant” contributing factor. What is the threshold between “significant” and “insignificant”? Five percent? Ten Percent? The threshold of “insignificance” is certainly no higher than that.

So, are humans responsible for at least 10 percent or so of recent global warming? In other words, are humans responsible for roughly – and merely – 0.06 degrees Celsius of warming during the past century? Most global warming “skeptics” certainly believe that!

The real question is, “So what?”

From the assertion that humans may have caused roughly 0.06 degrees of warming during the past century, it does not necessarily follow, as Huntsman and his fellow alarmists would have us believe, that humans are creating a global warming crisis. Nor does it necessarily follow that we must wreck our economy to fight it. I suspect that even the most sensitive of plant and animal species will not notice a 0.06 degree increase in temperature, especially when such a miniscule temperature increase is spread out over the course of a century.

So then, just what do “98 out of 100 climate scientists” believe? Nothing of significance, unless you like to misrepresent meaningless surveys to score cheap political points”.

As you should know, Gleick was in fact offered debating opportunities but he always declined.

There is a need for a real debate, including the many uncertainties in the science. This is precisely what has been surpressed.

Wikipedia is a primary player in the ClimateGate scam, led by William Connoley, cofounder of Mikey Mann’s RealClimate.org:

One person in the nine-member Realclimate.org team “U.K. scientist and Green Party activist William Connolley” would take on particularly crucial duties.

Connolley took control of all things climate in the most used information source the world has ever known ” Wikipedia. Starting in February 2003 … he rewrote Wikipedia’s articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world’s most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.

All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it ” more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred ” over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions…

The Medieval Warm Period disappeared, as did criticism of the global warming orthodoxy.

Connolley’s disturbing propaganda crusade was enthusiastically supported by Wikipedia management: “Connolley has done such amazing work and has had to deal with a fair amount of nonsense.” -Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder

Al Gore’s Mann-made Global Warming alarmism is a dangerous scam on a scale which dwarfs the Bernie Madoff scandal.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that liberals will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly.

I agree this was not good judgment on Gleick’s side. Scientists should be above the fray. On the other side, rarely has there been such a huge, heavily funded attack on scientists just doing there work fed by folks that don’t like the data that’s coming up.

I am afraid many mistake a squabble for a war,the upside of this issue is that it did expose the risks of modeling and this issue is long overdue as the precedence for modeling began 3 centuries ago when they tried to model the motions of the Earth using the newly invented watches with similar disruptive consequences,indeed the events centuries ago set the stage for the present situation hence the difference between a squabble over climate as opposed to a war over modeling. There is no substitute for human reasoning and the interpretative instincts which restrain speculative leaps such as the one that drives this issue and many more like it such as modeling ‘risk’ in financial markets which lead to very unstable situations a few years ago and the wider world is still dealing with.The inputs are too complex to force ultimate conclusions as unexpected situations emerge and people have no reason to doubt that the natural world is any different. When this is all said and done,climate studies will return to its home in documentaries where it can be enjoyed by people who love nature and realize there are some things bigger than humanity’s need to control things.

There is weak evidence for global warming, but it is not important – much greater warming and cooling have occurred for millenia and within civilized history.

The existing data does not support human caused global warming – it credibly contradicts it.

The basis of human caused warming claims are solely computer programs that are well known to be wrong – demonstrably so.

Global warming and human impact on the environment are not scientific fact but social phenomena that quite visibly exhibit beliefs and behaviors that are as old as humanity.

*********************************

THE LONG VERSION

for those confused and repelled by the clouds of nonsense and hysteria and for skeptics needing ammunition: ————————————————

As someone who is actually qualified to speak on the matter (Ph.D. in radiation science, MIT, years of research in earth sciences at NASA) I can tell you flat out that human caused (‘anthropogenic’) global warming (AGW) is utter nonsense. The actual evidence for global warming (GW) itself over the last century is thin but it could exist. Even if it does, it is not important because the observed warming, even the highest temperatures that can be found in the data, is well within the range of natural changes that have occurred over eons of geologic time. The earth has been much warmer than it is now even in recorded history – Greenland has now-frozen farms from the Vikings.

kitchentable’s list of physical ‘evidence’ – ALL of it (even if all of it is correct, which it certainly is not) – is easily within the range of phenomena from GW. There is nothing unusual about it. There are no scientific reasons to invoke AGW and considerable reasons not to, not the least of which is that global temperatures have not tracked the consumption of fossil fuels. The cited ‘evidence’ for GW, a century’s worth of temperature records of various types, are accurate to 2 to 5 Kelvins, while the ‘inferred’ GW for the period – not AGW – is about one Kelvin. That alone should be the end of the story. But there’s more – the only credible temperature data (accurate and global) is from satellites starting in about 1980. That data has shown fluctuating temperatures, including a small increase in temperature from ’80-’95 and a small decrease from ’95 – present. Neither is significant compared to the known global variations in temperature over geologic time, though any cooling still contradicts the AGW hypothesis.

Claims of AGW are based – entirely – on global climate models (GCM’s), computer programs that supposedly simulate the earth’s climate (and are abused by charlatans like Michael Mann). These models do not calculate anything that agrees with known data, nor have they ever. If used to simulate the recent past, they do not produce anything remotely approaching weather records. Believing their ‘predictions’ about the future is adopting a fantasy, and it is delusional and extremely dangerous to use them for environmental policy or resource allocation. There is no evidence for AGW. There is no reason to believe it is occurring – in fact, given that about a third of the CO2 in the atmosphere is from human activity and that climate behavior is quite small by historical standards, there is a fairly good case that fuel-based CO2 emissions are of little concern.

AGW is a social, not a natural phenomenon. Understanding it is in the domain of the humanities, particularly the sociology of science and the genesis of religious belief. As some basic observations from an extern, the extreme polarization of the debate, evidence of scientific malfeasance then believed by trusting others, the huge fortunes that have been made from GW, the accusations of corruption by subsidy, the huge ($100-200 billion per Forbes) worldwide industry, the irrationalism of domestic policy advocates when the US emissions of CO2 are minute compared to natural sources and now China’s primitive coal power plants – there are very large social forces at work.

gwkimball – Michael Mann doesn’t do predicting. His work has been in reconstructing past climates using proxies to estimate temperatures in the near past (less than 2000 years.) Your misunderstanding of Mann’s work and your use of “religion” to describe AGW work leads me to doubt your statements about your own background. Your statement that climate models don’t agree with known data is similarly uninformed. In fact, the site realclimate.org frequently does updates comparing model forecasts with real life climate. They’re pretty close. While it is true that there are natural sources of CO2, the fact remains that the normal interglacial CO2 level is aboput 280 ppm but CO2 is now at 393 ppm and it has been shown by isotopic analysis that the “extra” CO2 can be traced to combustion of fossil fuels. AGW theory predicts that warming due to CO2 “greenhousing” will be amplified by feedbacks such as increases in water vapor. That theory makes sense. Can you present an actual reason why that won’t happen? You might want to check your temperature records again. The earth has continued to warm since 1995. You might help your case among reasonable people by making a scientific case instead of accusations against dedicated scientists.

economart – As you should know, nobody is making a claim that CO2 is an energy source. That’s why I used the term “greenhousing.” (Although the actual effect is not the same as heat trapping in greenhouses.) To simplify, sunlight strikes the earths surface, is absorbed, and then reradiated toward space in the form of infrared radiation. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, including CO2, absorb some of this radiation and then reradiate it in random directions. Some of the reradiated heat travels downward and serves to make the earth warmer than it would otherwise be. I assume that you were trying to make a joke, but perhaps you actually are that obtuse.

Russell Seitz The reactions over the last week indicate that people do understand the disproportionate imbalance between money spent on countering the idea of human control over global temperatures pales in significance to the money spent promoting it,in short,people have still retained their common sense and are making decisions based on a level headed view of the matter.

Not all people are political minded in this issue,there are people who love nature enough to inquire as to why temperatures go up and down daily or annually and even longer term fluctuations.Had they succeeded in dumping long term temperature fluctuations into carbon dioxide,the science of climate would be finished insofar as if the temperature went up in the next decade the call would be for more to be done and if the temperatures went down it would be evidence that human measures were working so there would be no room for any other inputs in this horrible scenario.

Russell Seitz The reactions over the last week indicate that people do understand the disproportionate imbalance between money spent on countering the idea of human control over global temperatures pales in significance to the money spent promoting it,in short,people have still retained their common sense and are making decisions based on a level headed view of the matter.

Not all people are political minded in this issue,there are people who love nature enough to inquire as to why temperatures go up and down daily or annually and even longer term fluctuations.Had they succeeded in dumping long term temperature fluctuations into carbon dioxide,the science of climate would be finished insofar as if the temperature went up in the next decade the call would be for more to be done and if the temperatures went down it would be evidence that human measures were working so there would be no room for any other inputs in this horrible scenario where there is no room for anything other than a minor atmospheric gas

I happened to look at the information on the Pacific Institute Web Site and I realized the Heartland Institute Budget for global warming projects was actually much less than Peter Gleick’s budget. http://www.pacinst.org/about_us/financial_information/10%20Audit.pdf Check page2 and the total revenue was 2.3 million in 2010. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/leaked-docs-from-heartland-institute-cause-a-stir-but-is-one-a-fake/253165/ Global warming projects 2010: $964,000 and 2011: $629,000. Mr. Gleick must have sorely disappointed to find he was being harassed by paupers.

John McQuaid comments that there’s no evidence that Dr. Gleick is a “serial dissembler, or of any problems with his scientific and policy work.” I would beg to differ. Just reading Dr. Gleick’s 2009 “Bottled & Sold,” one finds that he ignores what’s right with bottled water (healthier than soda) and attempts to use isolated case examples to bolster HIS position that bottled water packaging is somehow different and worse than all the other food and beverage plastic packages. I would argue that like the HEARTLAND DEBACLE, he does this out of his frustration with how politicians have disregarded the near-crisis situation building with tap water infrastructure in the U.S. In both cases, his fight is nobel; his tactics despicable.